'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' second-highest opening ever

General view of Disney Star Wars characters before the game between the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Colorado Avalanche at Pepsi Center.
Photo: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports / via Reuters

WASHINGTON – "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" soared to $220 million on its North American opening weekend, data released Sunday showed, backing up months of hype and earning critical praise even as early audiences didn't quite feel the Force.

The latest instalment of the epic space opera was bettered only by 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the first movie in the saga's sequel trilogy which took $248 million on its debut weekend and a total gross of $937 million.

But despite a "certified fresh" rating of 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and lofty comparisons to "The Empire Strikes Back," widely seen as the best film in the franchise, 95,000 movie-goers were less enthused, bestowing it a 56 percent average that was colder than the ice planet Hoth.

The numbers could still converge, but the discrepancy so far is unusual.

"The Last Jedi" sees the return of the characters introduced in J.J. Abrams's first entry in the rebooted trilogy, and is also the last outing for character Leia Organa, played by Carrie Fisher, who died last December.

Box office figures are a poor measure of a film's popularity compared to older releases because they do not take inflation into account.

"The Last Jedi" was followed in second place by "Ferdinand," a computer-animated comedy about a bull with a big heart often mistaken for a dangerous beast, which took $13 million on what was also its debut weekend.